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Gravecrawler Discussion

1 week ago

Oof, I definitely thought
Imperial Seal
was a carbon-copy of
Vampiric Tutor
and did not realize it was sorcery speed. Yeah, that hurts (although I was never going to shell out $650 CAD for a tutor anyway). I take that one back, though I still think
Grim Tutor
doesn't cut it either.

Regarding
Liliana, Untouched By Death
, I also think I need some more testing before I can call this a permanent home. I like that it is a step toward having redundancy for
Gravecrawler
because having your GC eaten by a
Scavenging Ooze
can really neuter a game plan. I have found myself holding onto it in my hand until I am ready to go off with it because it is too easily destroyed and the +1 just isn't worth it to slam down without a game plan. I like that it offers a sort of removal but I don't like that if it does -2, you can't -3 again for two full turns. I am very conflicted and hope to see it in action. Let me know how your testing goes.

1 week ago

MediSyntax I've been playtesting this many times over and have found there to be some great lines of play (even without including lion's eye diamond) - the deck could even be made to fit a reasonably low budget!

With regard to
Carrion Feeder
- often I feel like the deck needs another sacrifice outlet & I don't have the tutor capacity to get
Phyrexian Altar
, play it & win in one turn, but carrion feeder is wonderful - so I may take up that idea of using
Phyrexian Ghoul
for added consistency.

Furthermore - after a week of testing:
Liliana, Untouched By Death
does enable some comboing wins with zombies other than
Gravecrawler
... but I feel like casting GC from the yard is not actually the issue. I believe that the resilience of
Bridge from Below
is ok at best - the fact that any other deck running a sacrifice outlet, or even
Flash
can stop the entire combo by removing it is very risky. Conversely - the ability to do the same by using
Diregraf Colossus
adds greatly to the consistency & backup plan for the deck (plus - this will 99% of the time enter with +1 to block tymna).

I've found the swings with
Mindslicer
to be absurd - as the game immediately becomes topdeck for 3+ turns. However at the 4 mana slot - I'd consider running
Imperial Seal
sooner, or
Grim Tutor
(as a lot of the time I find that I -NEED- the cards on time).

Lastly, I've been testing out
Thornbite Staff
as a combo option with
Soldevi Adnate
/
Priest of Forgotten Gods
- it's very mana intensive, but with priest & the usual GC & bridge setup it's a win, while also drawing you cards. This is... ok. Not great - but not awful. It's more than likely that I'd cut the
Thornbite Staff
for another ritual of some form / a tutor / artifact ramp, as the mana in here feels like it could use either a
Mox Diamond
/ a little more.

@xeratheenigma, I've considered cards such as
Go for the Throat
and
Terminate
, but holding up 2 mana every turn can feel like a serious drag and slows my board progression over time, so I would prefer to keep it to 1-mana instant speed spells if applicable. (Plus a lot of popular commanders utilize black anyway, but I agree that I'd like a card that had better range as it feels like a worse
Pyroblast
.)

The Gitrog player in my play group doesn't own a
Chains of Mephistopheles
, but I'm fairly certain it's discard effect would trigger before the dredge trigger unless they have two
Dakmor Salvage
's. Either way, it's discard effect by itself isn't an activated ability, so I question if using one to cycle through the deck this way would share the same un-deterministic qualities as using the discard phase. (And thus be frowned upon in tournament settings.)

1 week ago

My deck's focus: Win through infinite combos. (Most of which are graveyard-based.) The deck description is under construction. I'm only looking for solutions that can effectively disrupt my opponent's combos without hurting my own. (So no to
Rest in Peace
.)

I've already boarded in cards I believe can help stop my opponent's combos, but I'm not sure if I could be running better options, which is why I'd like second opinions on what I am running as well as what better options may be usable as well.

Question for Gitrog players: Lastly, while I am no Gitrog expert, I understand that so long as you have the Gitrog Monster, a discard outlet, and a
Dakmor Salvage
to loop with you can always manipulate your deck to consistently reach the same outcome through a deterministic number of cycles which leads to winning the game. My question is in regards to using your discard phase to discard
Dakmor Salvage
in order to win the game. While I understand discarding Dakmor this way leads to another discard phase and so on and so forth - cycling through your deck with this specific method does not always create the same outcome through a deterministic set of loops, and would not be a legal way to win the game in a tournament setting due to its un-deterministic nature, correct?

If so I am only interested in playing EDH under what would be allowed in tournament play, and I'd like to discourage any rule-bending win-conditions within my play-group otherwise it would force me to build around nonexistent problems when it comes to real events. That said I'm just too uncertain about the specific jargon and wording I'd use to accurately inform the other players as to this particular side of the gitrog deck given it's very complex interactions as well as it's specific implications with the rules. Simply put, I'd like to have an expert elaborate to me on what needs to be said so that I can just say "no" the next time this comes up without coming off as someone who is clueless over what they're talking about. Thank you.

4 weeks ago

You have fallen into two traps which ensnare a lot of new players; first, rather than running 4x of a smaller pool of cards, you are running 1x of most, second, you have over 60 cards in your deck. Both of these factors effect the consistency of your deck, in a normal 60 card deck, running mostly 4x cards, there is around a 40% chance that you get a given card in your opening hand.

This is a more subtle issue, your mana-curve is weighted to 2 and 3 mana cards, normally you want this to be 1 and 2 mana cards. This gives you more options on turn 1 and turn 2 and then moving forward. Some 1 mana zombie related cards include
Graf Harvest
,
Diregraf Ghoul
,
Ghoulcaller's Chant
and more pricy options
Gravecrawler
/
Cryptbreaker
. All of these cards have value in a zombie deck, but you wouldn't necessarily put them all in the same deck.

Lastly is the issue of card selection. In some ways this relates to the previous point, but not entirely. Firstly, you have marked this deck as Modern, this is an established format, which has rules around the cards it can include, these cards; Dark Suspicions, Fog of Gnats, Nefashu are not Modern legal. Secondly, you have a number of vanilla creatures, these are creatures which don't have any keywords, creatures like Gutter Skulk will rarely appear in a constructed deck, since there are numerous (two examples
Highborn Ghoul
/
Graveyard Marshal
) better options at the same mana cost.

I hope this is of help, Wizards of the Coast have many articles around deck construction, so it might be worthwhile for you to have a read, since they can go into more detail than I can on this forum.

Why?
More combo options with Gitrog, to pull off wins with recurring Tainted Strike over and over, making massive amounts of tokens with by recurring World Shaper with either Titania or Turntimber Sower or Rampaging Baloths. I am very tempted to make TGM the Commander, but I lack discard outlets and so Meren remains most value for money as commander currently.

Gravecrawler occurrence in decks from the last year

Commander / EDH:

All decks: 0.17%

Black: 0.14%

U/B (Dimir): 0.23%

W/U/B (Esper): 0.07%

Modern:

All decks: 0.07%

Black: 0.58%

Golgari: 0.14%

Legacy:

All decks: 0.05%

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